The bizarre act of diverting food and other relief materials meant for internally displaced persons in the North-East, as revealed by the office of the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, is the height of callousness and indifference to the plight of these unfortunate victims of senseless bloodletting by Islamist jihadists. It is evidence, yet again, of how public officials have been helping to prolong the humanitarian tragedy, which the Federal Government and the world at large have been trying to end. This speaks ill of us, especially when the state seems helpless in stopping it.
Out of 100 trucks of food dispatched to the affected Nigerians, 50 trucks were diverted, said the Senior Special Assistant to Osinbajo, Laolu Akande. But this larcenous behaviour did not start now. A Permanent Secretary in the Taraba State Emergency Management Agency, Nuvalga Dan-Habu, had last year lamented that one truck loaded with 600 bags of maize, out of the 20 trucks that left Gombe zonal office of the National Emergency Management Authority for the state, could not be accounted for. Others, including the United Nations Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, Tony Lanzer, had expressed concern over the same matter.
The crime is pervasive. The UN food diversion is done by government officials involved in the distribution chain. In June 2016, for instance, milk, rice and soap meant for the IDPs in Geidam, Yobe State, reached only a few of them. Sani Babagana, a UN High Commissioner for Refugees IDP Protection Monitor, said, “The NEMA officials bribed the local officials by giving them a portion of the items, while they carted away the bulk of the relief.” Many of them were eventually re-sold in the open market.
This is heart-wrenching. Transparency International says corruption in humanitarian work is among the worst kind. It can mean the difference between life and death. It robs people of essential resources, destroying dignity and causing desperation. During the Ramadan, the Federal Government had to apologise to Saudi Arabia after 200 tonnes of dates the kingdom sent as a Ramadan gift were found on sale in local markets.
About 30,000 metric tonnes of food monthly is required to feed the IDPs, says the UN. The relief materials are not for only those in the IDP camps, but also for about 12,691 households in Borno State that have returned to their destroyed villages, living a life of economic privation. A UN estimate last year had said that $279 million was needed to tackle the humanitarian crisis, whereas only $182 million had been released as of August.
To significantly curb the food diversion, the Acting President says that a new distribution strategy of deploying 1,376 military personnel and 656 policemen to guard the materials as they are moved from the warehouse to the beneficiaries in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states has been introduced. Osinbajo had on June 8 launched the food distribution programme to assuage the suffering of about 1.8 million people still displaced by the Islamists war in the North-East.
Government’s goal should not just be to “significantly curb” the scourge, but to eliminate it completely. The only way to achieve this is for the state to bare its fangs against the thieves. To rob the IDPs of their food is most inhuman and despicable. The country has tolerated this drivel for long simply because official stealing (of public funds and assets) has become a valorous enterprise and seemingly part of our national ethos. What a shame!
This is why the fight against the latest meningitis epidemic in Zamfara State and other areas in the North suffered a setback. Drugs provided free by the Federal Government to deal with the menace were diverted and re-sold in the open market in Kaura Namoda Local Government Area of the state, the same manner mosquito-treated nets for the roll-back malaria campaign were handled.
Tolerating this national embarrassment continually means that the right lessons have not been learnt from the way the outside world treats the country as a result. Example: Global Fund had temporarily suspended its financial support to Nigeria last year, on account of lack of accountability and outright theft of funds. The agency, which provided $800 million to Nigeria as assistance in the four years to 2016, had alleged that there were “challenges of grants not achieving impact targets, poor quality of health services, treatment disruptions, fraud, corruption and misuse of funds.”
Consequently, the food theft should not go the way of other abuses. Those who have compounded the misery of the IDPs by removing food from their mouths should be fished out, and let the law speak. Our service delivery system should be made to work. Entrusting relief delivery to the IDPs with security personnel clearly shows that we are far from developing real capacity for disaster management of this type. The point is clear: the uniformed men themselves cannot be trusted. This fact is attested to by a soldier’s shooting of a policeman during a fracas that resulted from attempts to divert food items meant for the IDPs sometime last year. Similarly, four policemen were quizzed by the Criminal Investigation Department in Borno State, for allegedly stealing relief materials under the custody of their politically exposed boss. Two officials were reportedly jailed for selling food aid in May.
Corruption in humanitarian aid is shocking. But aid agencies can do more to minimise the diversion of materials. Confidential complaints systems, according to TI, are vital. These enable staff and recipients to report corruption freely. By working together, the humanitarian community can also close loopholes against corruption. Codes of conduct for aid personnel, especially security agents, are also essential. It is, however, the responsibility of states to protect their citizens. The displaced people should be resettled in their communities so that they can have their lives back.
The IDPs are like refugees in Syria and Iraq; with the abducted Chibok schoolgirls, they have become the unmistakable hideous symbols of Boko Haram’s barbaric blitz against the Nigerian state since 2009, for which over 30,000 Nigerians have been killed. The crisis has orphaned thousands of children and forced about 2.5 million people to flee their homes. Therefore, those who milk them dry or make a fortune out of their misfortune are enemies of the society and should be treated accordingly.
